THE HAGUE, Dec 1 (Reuters) – The president of the International Criminal Court said on Monday U.S. sanctions imposed on senior court officials disrupt their personal lives but vowed the institution would not yield to outside pressure.
President Donald Trump’s administration slapped targeted sanctions on nine ICC officials, including prosecutors and judges, earlier this year in retaliation for investigations into suspected Israeli war crimes. Sources have said Washington is also mulling sanctions against the entire court.
“We never accept any kind of pressure from anyone on issues of interpretation of the statutory framework and adjudication of cases,” Judge Tomoko Akane said on the first day of the annual meeting in The Hague of the court’s governing body, made up of representatives of its 125 member states.
Akane said the sanctions had unsettled the family lives of targeted officials and disrupted their financial transactions, even in ICC member states in Europe.
The sanctions freeze any U.S. assets the individuals may have and essentially cut them off from the U.S. financial system, with which almost all internationally operating banks have close ties.
The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as figures from the Palestinian Hamas militant group, for alleged crimes committed during the Gaza war. They have all denied the charges mentioned in the warrants.
Washington has previously targeted court officials with sanctions for their roles in those cases and in a separate investigation into suspected crimes in Afghanistan, which initially had examined actions by U.S. troops.
The ICC was founded in 2002 under a treaty giving it jurisdiction to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes that were either committed by a citizen of a member state or had taken place on a member state’s territory.
(Reporting by Stephanie van den Berg; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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